Mexican to Coordinate Care for Immigrants, Undocumented Children in Chicago

Mexican-American Tonantzin Carmona, 24, has assumed the management of the Office of New Americans at Chicago City Hall, which provides needed aid to immigrants and will coordinate shelter in this city for 1,000 undocumented Central American children.

The young woman replaces another Mexican, Adolfo Hernandez, who was the first director of this office, founded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel soon after he was elected, with the mission of making Chicago the best city in the world for welcoming immigrants.

Carmona said in an interview with Efe that her predecessor did an “excellent job” of promoting the creation and expansion of immigrants’ businesses and the development, attraction and retention of talents from other countries.

“We’ll keep improving Chicago’s status as a vibrant international city,” she said of a metropolis whose officials are barred from asking the immigration status of anyone seeking aid.

“We seek to offer more opportunities to those with little command of English by means of a portal on the Internet, official documents and posters in the foreign languages most spoken here, like Polish, Mandarin, Arabic and Russian, as well as Spanish,” she said.

The Office of New Americans will strengthen its program for “dreamers” and other undocumented youngsters, which according to Carmona is the first and only one in the country, as well as the program of internships that makes it possible to offer 23,000 job opportunities to youths without papers.

Mayor Emanuel has charged her with finding shelter for undocumented children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and her office has succeeded up to now in identifying vacant spaces where 1,000 beds will be installed.